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Assignment: Syria’s World Cup Dream

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Syria’s World Cup Dream

01/06/2017 GMT

BBC World Service - Assignment, Syria’s World Cup Dream

Syria’s dream of reaching next year’s football World Cup survives.

Despite war and crippling sanctions, Syria’s footballers are still dreaming big and may reach the next World Cup. Richard Conway is with the team for this extraordinary story.

Syria’s National Football team is in the running for qualifying for the World Cup - an astonishing achievement for a country entering its seventh year of civil war. The team can’t play at home and many of its star players have left Syria, only joining the squad abroad from time to time. Other stars refuse to play for a team funded by the government of President Assad. Richard Conway has spent time with the squad in Damascus and Malaysia as they try to qualify for the 2018 World Cup in Russia.  He discovers that, for many Syrians, the football team is a focus of national pride, one which appears to transcend the country’s deep and bloody divisions.

Producers: David Lockwood and John Murphy

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